Hey everyone!
My apologies for my delayed "appearance" here on the forums. My position at LWD has been reduced to part-time and I no longer have an assistant to help with communication so please try to keep that in mind when waiting for my attention.
One item I would like to address before going further is the comments claiming Lone Wolf purposely launched the Content Market knowing we'd be ceasing development on Realm Works. I can promise you that is 100% untrue. I was one of those that pushed for the completion of the Realm Works Kickstarter as I believed it was the right thing to do and I believe in the product itself. We fully expected to be adding new content and features as normal in the months that followed and are saddened that this won't be the case.
I can certainly sympathize with everyone's upset over the current situation and I've put together a list of answers to the most commonly asked questions I've seen flying around that will hopefully make the situation at least less dire than some are imagining.
1. Will Realm Works still be available for purchase in the future?
Of course! Realm Works is still an incredibly useful tool that we’ve come to love, and we have no intention of pulling it from the market.
2. Are the servers going to be shut down?
Of course not! We have no reason to shut the servers down and have zero intention of doing so. We’ve suspended work on other products over the years and they have continued to be heavily used long after new coding work was ceased, Realm Works is no different. It’s still a highly useful tool that we expect many users will continue to enjoy for years to come
3. Will Realm Works still provide online sync capability?
Absolutely! Nothing is changing with online synching; Realm Works and all its current features will continue to work in the same manner it has been.
4. Will refunds be granted to users who recently purchased the product?
Many users still consider Realm Works to be quite useful for campaign management, but if you’re within our 60-day guarantee window of purchase we will absolutely issue you a refund. While we might not be adding any new exciting features in the future there are still plenty of things to get excited about in Realm Works and we encourage you to take it for a spin before making a decision.
5. What about the people who just recently renewed access? Will there be an option for refunds for them?
No. The servers are still running, just as before, and Realm Works is still a powerful tool. Access isn’t being lost and the program will still work as it always has, we’re simply not adding any new bells or whistles at this time.
6. Will we continue to provide support to end-users or are users effectively on their own?
We'll do our best to continue providing product support, especially as it relates to individual accounts. Support for technical issues will be limited, but we'll do what we can to answer questions, provide guidance, and solve problems where we can.
7. If something breaks the product entirely in the future, will we address it?
It depends entirely on the nature of the problem, the number of users impacted, and the complexity of identifying and fixing the problem. Realm Works has been running well for quite some time now. There have been occasional issues, but we just fixed the bugs that were being most widely reported by users. Fortunately, the likelihood of there being a bug that seriously impacts numerous users is quite low. Users should continue, as they have been, to be responsible and maintain suitable backups using the mechanisms that are already provided within the product.
8. Have you considered opening the code to the community?
We have discussed it at length but won’t be doing so at this time. Our original vision included evolving Realm Works and Hero Lab both to a point where we could more fully integrate them and blur the lines between the two products. While we don’t currently have the resources to do this, we still absolutely plan to bring some of the key capabilities from Realm Works into Hero Lab. Additionally, the commercial framework used in the Realm Works UI costs thousands of dollars and anyone wanting to work on Realm Works would need to purchase that framework to begin working with the product, making it unlikely that much good would come from it.
9. Any chance of opening up the content market to user submissions of original material?
This is something we originally intended to pursue, but we also wanted to ensure there was consistency and continuity of all the material we released. That entailed significantly more work than just putting a file into the Content Market and while we were excited to make it a reality, we never quite had the resources available to put the plan into place. It’s certainly something we might consider in the future given enough interest, but we’re currently unable to allot the time to pursue it.
10. Can publishers sell their self-made RW content on DTRPG or other marketplace platforms?
Absolutely! However, it’s important they keep in mind that we can't enforce the security aspects of content that is released outside of the Content Market itself. Just like PDFs downloaded through DTRPG and other markets can potentially be shared freely out in the wild, so could Realm Works import files.
Hopefully, that answers some of the lingering questions. I will check back here for others in the days ahead.
